Early (and Later) LHC Search Strategies for Broad Dimuon Resonances

Abstract

Resonance searches generally focus on narrow states that would produce a sharp peak rising over background. Early LHC running will, however, be sensitive primarily to broad resonances. In this paper we demonstrate that statistical methods should suffice to find broad resonances and distinguish them from both background and contact interactions over a large range of previously unexplored parameter space. We furthermore introduce an angular measure we call ellipticity, which measures how forward (or backward) the muon is in eta, and allows for discrimination between models with different parity violation early in the LHC running. We contrast this with existing angular observables and demonstrate that ellipticity is superior for discrimination based on parity violation, while others are better at spin determination.

arXiv comment31 pages, 19 figures. References added, minor modifications made to section 6

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Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Broad composite resonances and their signals at the LHC
• Spin-analysis of s-channel diphoton resonances at the LHC
• W' production at the LHC in the 4-site Higgsless model
• Beyond $M_{t\bar{t}}$: learning to search for a broad $t\bar{t}$ resonance at the LHC
• Kaluza-Klein mass spectra on extended dimensional branes